Canada: Public Schooling in Ontario in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

In years to come we shall probably look back at the 1980s as one of the most important and controversial decades in the history of public education in North America. With the publication in April 1983 of the National Commission on Excellence in Education's (NCEE) report titled A Nation at Risk, there began in the United States what some observers have dubbed the "Great School Debate." The NCEE report, commissioned by T.H. Bell, then secretary of education, warned Americans that their schools were threatened by "a rising tide of mediocrity." A Nation at Risk claimed that this situation would prove calamitous for America if the country did not reassert its commitment to learning. The stakes were high, according to the report: America stood to lose its "slim competitive edge... in world markets" if it did not train its citizens in the literacy and occupational skills necessary for survival in the anticipated "information age."